Video: Oscar-Winning Short ‘Saving Face’ Debuts on HBO March 8

Video: Oscar-Winning Short 'Saving Face' Debuts on HBO March 8

The Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, “Saving Face,” will debut on HBO March 8. On the Oscar red carpet, I spoke to filmmakers Daniel Junge and Pakistani Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy — the first Pakistani to be nominated for an Oscar, much less win one — about the horrific practice of men throwing acid into the faces of women in Pakistan (see below).

The disfigured women have one saviour, Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a plastic surgeon who tries to help them move on with their lives. During filming, Pakistani women parliamentarians showed testimony of victims of acid violence, and successfully enacted legislation to punish these perpetrators more severely, with life imprisonment. This is yet another case of a movie helping to change the world.

The film was produced by Davis Coombe, Daniel Junge, Alison Greenberg, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Sabiha Sumar and exec produced by HBO Documentary Films’ Lisa Heller and Sheila Nevins. (My recent interview with Nevins is here.)